


The Stars are On Your Side

by Limestone_and_Hemlock



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex and his brothers grew up with their mom, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brief Reference to Teenage Kyle Valenti getting punched in the face, Dead Jesse Manes, Dead Jesse Manes is a better father than Living Jesse Manes, Instances of Anti-Gay Language, Kissing, M/M, Mild Angst, Mild Referenced Violence, Pre-Canon, Things are the same but different, Walt Sanders is Michael Guerin's Father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28575819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Limestone_and_Hemlock/pseuds/Limestone_and_Hemlock
Summary: What if Jesse Manes died when Alex was six months old? What if Walt Sanders was Michael's foster dad?
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 28
Kudos: 109





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Teenage Michael and Alex talk in a graveyard.

Michael found Alex in the back row of the graveyard. He was sitting in the grass, facing a military-style gravestone. “Hi Alex,” Michael said, feeling like an asshole as he gripped the handle of the guitar case.

“Hi,” Alex said, sounding nonplussed. “Are you…do you know anyone who’s buried here?”

“Nope,” Michael said. As far as he knew, he had no relatives on this planet, living or dead. “I was looking for you, actually. Liz said you come here on Wednesdays. I wanted to give this back to you,” he said, holding out the guitar.

“Thanks?” Alex took it, still looking confused. “I didn’t even realize it was gone.” 

“I was gonna put it back,” Michael said. “But the music room was locked by the time I got there.”

They looked at each other for a long moment. “You wanna sit down?” Alex asked.

Michael sat cross-legged in the grass next to Alex. “So why the weekly graveyard visits?” He asked.

“I like to visit my dad,” Alex said.

Oh. Michael looked at the inscription on the gravestone for the first time since he got there. Jesse Manes, PFC US Army, Persian Gulf, January 3 1967-February 12 1991.

“Your dad was in the army?” Michael asked. He’d known Alex’s dad was dead, but he’d never asked how it happened. They didn’t know each other that well, in spite of the amount of time Michael spent sneaking glances at Alex in pre-calc.

“Are you kidding?” Alex’s eyebrows went up. “All the men on my dad’s side of the family are veterans. A few on my mom’s side too.”

“Huh,” Michael said, trying to square that with everything else he knew about sweet, music-loving Alex. “You don’t really seem like the son of a military family.”

“Why not?” Alex asked. “Am I too much of a sissy?”

“No!” Michael said, feeling a flush creeping up his neck. “I just meant…I don’t know. I’m an asshole. Ignore me.”

“I’d rather not ignore you,” Alex said with a crooked smile. “It’s nice to have company.”

“Have you ever thought about joining up?” Michael asked. The thought of gentle, beautiful, obviously-queer Alex on a military base gave Michael a cold feeling at the center of his chest.

“God, no,” Alex said with a grin. “I’m pretty sure Mom would break my legs if I tried to enlist. I believe her exact words were ‘I’m already a war widow, I’m not losing any of my sons to the US military-industrial complex.’”

That made Michael smile. He knew Mindy Manes a little, mostly as the loving-but-tough single mother of four boys, who co-owned the Crashdown with the Ortecho family. “What happened to your dad?” Michael asked, feeling timid and brave at the same time.

“He was killed in action during Desert Storm,” Alex said. “Six months after I was born. My mom doesn’t talk about him much. I think the most she’s ever said about him at one time was that he wasn’t always an easy man to love, but she did, for better or for worse. So I just…come here and talk to him sometimes. I like to think he’d be proud of me.”

Michael paused, and Alex looked away skittishly. “Is that stupid?” Alex asked. Michael wanted more than anything to tell Alex about all the nights he’d spent on Foster Ranch, looking up at the stars and hoping that someone up there might be looking back. But there was just no good way to tell a cute boy that you crash landed on earth in some sort of intergalactic Titanic and spent the next fifty years gestating in a glowing egg.

So instead he reached out and put his hand on Alex’s. And Alex didn’t shake him off. Instead, he laced his fingers between Michael’s. And in spite of the serious conversation and the fact that they were sitting in a graveyard, Michael felt a burst of excitement and pleasure behind his ribs at the contact.

Alex gave Michael a curious, slightly sly look. “Why’d you take my guitar, Guerin?”

The heat in Michael’s neck travelled all the way up to his ears. “I was kind of hoping you’d come looking for it,” he admits. “I guess I was trying to get your attention.”

It seemed like Alex understood what Michael was trying to say, but he didn’t react directly. “There are ways to get my attention besides petty theft, you know.”

“I always wanted to learn to play guitar,” Michael said. “Maybe you could teach me some time.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Michael do a biology project.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot stress the extent to which all the science stuff in this chapter is made up. Seriously. I have no idea whether an asteroid ever hit near Roswell or what the chemical components of the desert soil near Roswell are.

A week later, Michael found Alex leaning against the fender of his truck after school. They hadn’t spoken since the graveyard. Michael had started to wonder if he’d misinterpreted Alex being friendly for more than that.

Alex smiled shyly now, dipping his head, somehow looking cute instead of stupid in his Panic at the Disco t-shirt, eyeliner and wallet chain.

“Hey,” Michael said, trying not to sound overeager.

“I have a kind of weird favor to ask,” Alex said hooking his thumbs into his belt loops.

“Sure!” Michael said. So much for not sounding too eager. “I mean, um. What do you need?”  
“Can you take me to the desert to collect soil samples for an AP Bio project?” Alex asked. “Flint was supposed to drive me, but he got suspended after lunch and he had to take the car home.”

“What happened?” Michael asked. Flint Manes was a quiet, serious kid with a high-and-tight haircut; Michael had never known him to be a rule-breaker.

“Kyle Valenti called me a cocksucker outside of homeroom, so Flint punched him in the mouth.” Alex tried, and failed, to suppress a smile as he said it.

“Flint’s a good man,” Michael said, feeling his mouth mirroring Alex’s smile.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “He is. I kind of feel bad for Kyle, though. Flint’s got a hell of a right hook.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad for Kyle,” Michael said. “There’s a long list of people who’d like to punch him in the face. Flint is just the first person with the balls to actually do it.”

Michael wondered how Kyle could have been so stupid. Alex and his brothers didn’t start fights, but they certainly knew how to finish them. Clay had already graduated, but Gregory and Flint were seniors, Alex was a junior, and it was common knowledge that if you fucked with one of the Manes brothers, you fucked with all of them.

“Anyway,” Alex said, still trying to hide his grin. “Soil samples?”  
“Your chariot awaits,” Michael said, unlocking his car.

####

After they parked, Michael sat in the cab of the truck with his legs dangling out the open door while Bright Eyes played on the stereo. He’d kind of hoped that Alex was using the Bio project as a pretext for driving out to the desert and furiously making out. But no; Alex walked around diligently, crouching down to scoop dry, gritty desert soil into a series of zip-loc bags and storing them in his backpack. Michael made a futile effort not to look at his ass as he did.

As they were driving back into town, Michael asked, “Why is the desert soil all…glittery?” He indicated the shiny, silver-black specks in the dun-colored grit.

“It’s iron and nickel,” Alex said, shaking the bag a little. “From an asteroid that crashed here like a gazillion years ago. Apparently there’s some pretty unique animal and plant life here because of it.”

“Do you think there’s a connection between the asteroid and what happened in ’47?” Michael asked. It was comforting to think that maybe his family had meant to end up here, even if they’d done a bad job of landing. Maybe Roswell was hospitable to alien life. Maybe this was where he was supposed to be after all.

“’47?” Alex asked, sounding kind but a little incredulous. “You mean like…the aliens?”

Michael shrugged, worried that he’s said too much.

“You know, I really believed in aliens when I was little,” Alex said. “As soon as I learned to read, I got all these books about the crash out of the library. I think it took me until I was twelve to finally accept it was just a weather balloon.”

“A weather balloon?” Michael asked, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“Apparently it was some military exercise that went sideways,” Alex said. “Literally and figuratively.”

Michael tried not to laugh out loud. As government coverups went ‘it was a weather balloon’ was pretty weak.

Alex glanced at him. “Do you believe in aliens?”

“Just call me Fox Mulder,” Michael said, flipping on the turn signal. “Do you really think it’s so impossible?”

“I mean,” Alex said. “There’s probly life somewhere out there in the universe. I just don’t think any of it crash-landed here in a flying saucer sixty years ago.”

Michael kept his mouth shut, even though he felt the truth pushing against his teeth.

“Take a left on North Mesa,” Alex said. “We’re at 1314.”

The brakes whined as Michael pulled to a stop. “Do you wanna keep hanging out?” He asked. “We could go to the diner, or….”

“I work at the diner,” Alex reminded him. Michael knew this, of course; Mindy Manes’ three youngest sons all pulled shifts at the diner. Sometimes Michael occupied a booth for an hour, sipping on a shake, just to stare at Alex waiting tables in an apron and antenna headband.

“It doesn’t have to be the diner,” Michael said, though his options were limited to that and McDonalds. He couldn’t afford anything else.

“It’s my night to help Mom make dinner,” Alex told him. “Another time maybe?”

Michael nodded, trying not to look disappointed. He didn’t know if Alex with giving him the truth or a polite brush-off, but he would assume the latter until Alex told him otherwise. Then Alex leaned across the gearshift and kissed him for one…two…three seconds.

Michael opened his eyes and inhaled to say something when Alex pulled away, but before he could, Alex grabbed his backpack, jumped out the door, and bounded up the steps into his house.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael has a conversation with his foster dad, Walt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not technically a Michael Sanders fic because Michael has not been living with Walt very long. (Also his last name is still Guerin because Alex calling him "Guerin" is A+ content.)
> 
> Honestly I intended this fic to be pure fluff, but no matter how hard I try, the angst creeps in.

Michael parked out back of the junkyard. There was a double-wide back there, plunked at a cockeyed angle to the fence. He unlocked the front door. The entire place was maybe 1800 square feet, and kind of smelled like wet dog and cigarettes competing with the warm, meaty smell of the stockpot bubbling on the stove. But there were worse places to live. Michael had lived in plenty of them.

Walt Sanders was dozing on the couch with his dog in his lap. He startled awake when the screen door clattered shut behind Michael. “You shouldn’t sleep with the stove on,” Michael told him.

“Just dozed off for a second,” Walt said, like Michael couldn’t see the empty gin bottle under the couch. Michael had lived with a lot of alcoholics as a kid. Mean drunks, violent drunks. Walt wasn’t like that. He was usually a maudlin, sleepy drunk. More than once, Michael had taken a smoldering cigarette butt out of Walt’s limp fingers as he slept off a bender, to keep him from burning the house down. He wished the old man would stop before he drank himself into the grave, but Michael knew better than to try to pull someone else off a path of self-destruction.

So instead, he lifted the lid on the stockpot, and let a cloud of fragrant steam obscure his vision. “Chili again?” Michael asked.

“What’s wrong with chili?” Walt asked, spilling the dog off his lap as he clambered to his feet and stretched his limbs. “We can eat it for a week.”

“That’s the problem, old man,” Michael said with affection, covering the pot back up. It was a year to the day since he started living here, and he’d gotten heartily sick of Walt’s chili about six months in.

“Ingrate,” Walt said, but he was smiling as he said it. “Go put your stuff away. Dinner’s almost ready.”

Dinner was on the table after Michael tossed his backpack into his room and washed his hands. There were two bowls of chili with steam wafting off of them, a beer for Walt, a soda for Michael. (Walt probably would have given Michael a beer if he’d asked. Michael didn’t ask.) And Walt was cutting up an avocado.

“What’s that for?” Michael asked. Fresh produce was a rarity in the Sanders household.

“A garnish,” Walt said with a shrug. “There’s salsa and shredded cheddar in the fridge too, if you want.”

“Well shit,” Michael said. “If I’d known we were getting all fancy I would’ve changed into my tuxedo.” 

Walt huffed out a dry laugh.

“Seriously,” Michael said, “what’s the occasion?”

“You’ve been here a year, kid,” Walt said. “You didn’t remember?”

Michael didn’t answer, even though warmth flowed through his veins. This was the longest he’d ever been in any foster home. And it had started to feel less like a foster home, and more like…well. Home.

But he didn’t know how to say any of that, so instead he shoveled a giant bite of chili into his mouth and chewed.

“Where the hell were you today, anyway?” Walt asked, taking the seat across from Michael.

Michael finished chewing, swallowed, and said, “I was working on a bio project.”

“I thought you were taking chemistry.”

None of Michael’s old foster parents would’ve cared enough to remember that. “I was helping a friend,” he said, with a tender smile he tried not to show to Walt.

Apparently he failed, because Walt lifted a grizzled eyebrow and asked, “What kind of friend?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said, tucking his chin down toward his shoulders.

“I can’t believe you’re acting this shy about it after what happened last month,” Walt said, sipping his beer.

Seven weeks ago, Walt had walked in on Michael and Lindsay naked on the couch. Michael blushed at the memory. (Lindsay had ended things three days later. Apparently she already had a boyfriend.)

“So what’s her name?” Walt asked.

“Not ‘her,’” Michael said, looking down at his bowl.

Walt looked up with his spoon hovering halfway to his mouth. “You saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said, finally meeting his eyes. “Maybe.”

Walt put the spoon in his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. “So what’s his name, then?”

Michael stood up, walked around the table, and put his arms around Walt, resting his chin on top of the old man’s grizzled head. He’d never done that before. Michael had grown up without much affection, and Walt had been living alone for most of his life. Neither of them were particularly physically demonstrative. As Michael hugged him, Walt’s shoulders went stiff for a second, then the sinewy muscles relaxed and he reached up to squeeze Michael’s hands.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael runs into Alex at the drive-in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter expands the details of the through-the-looking-glass AU where this story is occurring. Also, this chapter contains large amounts of Bi Fuckboy Michael.

Michael went to the drive-in a week later. Izzy Evans had invited him. Michael did not particularly care for drive-in movies. He also didn’t particularly care for Izzy and Max Evans, even if the three of them shared the same fucked-up extraterrestrial secret. Max and Izzy had this tendency to act like Michael was their fucking charity case, since they felt guilty about the whole they-got-adopted-and-Michael-didn’t thing. Max had stopped trying to make nice after Michael and Liz Ortecho made out in a coat closet during a game of 7 minutes in heaven. Apparently getting to second base with Liz had earned Michael a permanent place at the top of Max’s shit list. Michael got a grim satisfaction out of that. But ever since then, Izzy had been especially aggressive with the friendly overtures.

"It’s supposed to be the three of us," Izzy had once told Michael cryptically after cornering him next to the water fountain at school. Which was exactly the sort of new-agey bullshit he’d come to expect from Izzy, who always wore a chunk of rose quartz around her neck and probably decorated her room with bundles of sage and lavender. She and Maria Deluca were practically attached at the hip, best friends since kindergarten. Michael briefly imagined them having a sleepover together, swapping turquoise jewelry for healing crystals and gossiping about boys. He banished the mental image before it morphed into a porny pillow fight.

But anyway; He came to the movie. He declined Izzy’s offer to sit with her and Max. Her usually-beatific expression had soured a little at Michael’s refusal, making Michael feel inexplicably guilty as he settled into the bed of his truck. They were screening Superman (the 1978 version) tonight. Michael had always thought Clark Kent was a perfectly boring character, but at least it wasn’t War of the Worlds this time. Plus, Christopher Reeve wasn’t bad to look at. 

So Michael settled in, drank a coke and ate a bucket of hot, salty popcorn that greased his fingers with fake butter. Two hours in, he wandered off into the desert to piss instead of waiting in line for the single cinderblock bathroom. He stopped at the concessions stand on the way back, and spotted Tom Long getting into it with some other redneck. Michael hated Tom, his son Wyatt, and their entire racist, xenophobic, gun-toting family. So he changed directions and crashed headlong into Tom, popping the lid off his wax-paper cup and spilling soda down the front of his shirt.

“God, I’m sorry,” Michael said, stepping nimbly out of the way in case Tom took a swing. He weaved between cars and trucks as Tom exploded with curses behind him, too shitfaced to follow. He waited until he was in the dark behind the last row of cars to open Tom’s wallet, which he’d palmed when he crashed into him.

Michael hadn’t stolen anything from anyone since he started living with Walt. Before that, though, he’d been in the habit of stealing money, liquor and weed from his foster parents. He’d also gone through a Dickensian-orphan pickpocketing phase when he was thirteen, which was when he mastered the bump-and-grab. Tom only kept twenty dollars in his wallet. Not a lot, but enough to recoup Michael’s concession-stand spending. He knew better than to try to use Tom’s credit card; Michael was not any sort of criminal mastermind and he’d get caught for absolute sure.

He had just taken Tom’s driver’s license out of one of the pockets when a voice said, “What are you doing?” 

Michael nearly jumped out of his scalp. He whipped around to see Alex in a black-and-white tie-dye hoodie.

“What are you doing here?” Michael asked. He’d learned over the years that sometimes the best way to throw someone off the scent of his crimes was to go on the offensive.

“I came with Maria and Liz,” Alex said, plucking the license from Michael’s fingers and looking at it. “You look great for forty-five, Tom,” he added, looking back up at Michael. “I hope you weren’t planning to buy liquor with this, cause you don’t look anything like him. Did you come here to steal wallets?”

“No,” Michael said, defensive. “Izzy invited me. And it was just the one wallet.”

“You’re more of a criminal than I thought,” Alex said. He sounded intrigued.

Michael smiled sharply and stepped close enough that they were almost touching. “That turn you on?” He asked, tugging gently on the drawstring of Alex’s hoodie.

“A little,” Alex said as Michael rolled the metal aglet between his thumb and forefinger.

Michael glanced behind Alex at the screen. The credits were rolling. He pocketed Tom’s cash and ID and tossed the wallet behind him, not looking to see where it landed. “You wanna go for a ride?”

Alex let a slow, sustained breath out before he said, “Yeah. I think I do.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael meets Mindy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final Chapter. Might add a coda/epilogue later.

It was winter break when Alex’s family found out. Three months after the drive-in. For the first few weeks after that, he and Michael would drive into the desert after school, talk a little, and then make out in the truck bed. Then November came and the temperature started dropping for real.

So they moved their activities indoors. Specifically, to Alex’s house when his Mom and brothers were working and he wasn’t. Michael hadn’t brought Alex to Walt’s yet. It wasn’t that Michael was embarrassed, but it was one thing for Alex to know that Michael lived in a mobile home behind the junk yard with an old man and a dog. It was another thing for him to see it.

But anyway: Alex’s house. Sometimes they did homework at the kitchen table. Sometimes Alex taught Michael guitar. Mostly they made out, on the couch or on Alex’s twin bed in the room he shared with Flint. That particular day, they were on Alex’s bed, Alex straddling Michael’s waist as they kissed, and kissed, and kissed. The clock radio was on, which was probably why they didn’t hear Flint and Gregory come in until the bedroom door flew open.

Alex and Michael sat up fast, bumping heads, Alex still straddling Michael’s lap. Flint was in the doorway, grinning broadly, wearing his backpack and the antenna headband he’d apparently forgotten to take off at the end of his diner shift. “I knew it,” he said, reaching up to hook his fingers around the top of the door frame.

Gregory appeared behind him. “You did not.”

Michael and Alex disentangled themselves while Gregory and Flint argued. Alex threw Michael’s shirt at him as Michael blushed hard enough that the surplus flush travelled all the way down to his bare chest. At least they were both wearing pants. Michael pulled Alex’s pillow into his lap to cover the bulge in his jeans. Jesus, could this situation be more embarrassing?

Michael realized that “Grind With Me” was playing on the clock radio. Yep: that made it more embarrassing.

Flint narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms, looking at Michael. “So,” he said. “What are your intentions with our baby brother, Michael Guerin?”

“Oh my God, leave them alone,” Gregory said, hooking a finger around the loop at the top of Flint’s backpack and pulling him out of the room.

“Where were you, anyway, Greg?” Alex asked. “You never told me what mysterious errand you had to run after school.”

“He offered to help Maria do inventory at the Pony for the privilege of making moon eyes at her the entire time,” Flint called from the living room. “I told him that if he doesn’t ask her out soon, I will.”

That made Michael smile. He’d had a huge crush on Maria for the first two years of high school, but she’d only ever had eyes for the Manes brothers. First Alex, who dated her for six months before coming out to her. And now Greg, who clearly liked her back, but was taking his sweet time to do anything about it.

“Greg needs to tell her how he feels,” Alex said, apparently thinking along the same lines. “You know how I knew I was gay?”

“How?”

“Because I couldn’t make it work with Maria. Who is awesome. And beautiful. So I was obviously a big old homo.”

Michael grinned, and nudged Alex with his shoulder.

An hour later, Michael, Alex, Flint and Gregory were all doing homework in the living room. Alex and Gregory were at the table, Michael and Flint sat on the couch. Mindy came in the house with her arm around a bag of groceries.

She looked at Michael as she tossed her keys onto an end table. “Last time I checked I only had three teenage boys living under this roof,” she said. “So which one of them are you friends with?”

“Um,” Michael said, blushing again, worried that the exact nature of his relationship with Mindy’s son was written on his face.

“He’s mine,” Alex said, apparently unabashed. Maybe he’d already told her. “Mom this is Michael Guerin. Michael, this is my mom, Mindy.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Manes,” Michael said, face still hot as he stood to shake hands.

“Likewise,” she said. “This one’s polite,” she said, shooting Alex a look that made Michael wonder who Alex had brought home before him. And if Alex maybe had a thing for bad boys. He felt an irrational flash of jealousy toward the hypothetical boys who had been here before him.

“Would you like to stay for dinner, Michael Guerin?” Mindy asked.

“Yes, please,” Michael said.

“Good,” she set the bag of groceries by the fridge. “Now which one of you didn’t take the chicken out of the freezer like I asked?”

There was a pause, and then overlapping chatter as Alex and his brothers blamed each other for the chicken still being frozen solid. Michael sat back and smiled, wondering-–hoping–-if he’d have a family like Alex’s someday.


End file.
